This article is full of bias. The writer has an anti-business agenda and cherry picked a group of examples in order to make these kind of services wrong.
If they don't pay enough to get workers, then guess what? No one will work there!
If they don't pay enough to get workers, then guess what? No one will work there!
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/07/dangerous-meatpa...
Not sure how that's a political issue.
"Well, what if I do start crying?" I ask the woman who warns me to keep it together no matter how awfully I'm treated. "Are they really going to fire me for that?"
"Yes," she says. "There's 16 other people who want your job. Why would they keep a person who gets emotional, especially in this economy?"
Not sure how that's a political issue either.
theorique: This article is full of bias. The writer has an anti-business agenda and cherry picked a group of examples in order to make these kind of services wrong.
I think most people, regardless of their opinion of theorique's comment, would agree that this is a fairly political statement. If nothing else, it's saying the OA is political.
The response by minikites: What a rosy Econ 101 view of the world. In reality, tons of people are desperate for money and put up with a lot of predatory business processes. Lots of people work without healthcare because they're purposely scheduled for just enough hours to make them less than full time. followed by two links to the motherjones.com domain
Also a fairly political statement in itself, even disregarding the sources.
However, I commented specifically on the source. Motherjones.com. A site owned by the Foundation for National Progress. It'd be hard to come up with a more political name that doesn't include Republican or Democratic. From their own FAQ page you can pull out several nice-sounding phrases that are thinly veiled Democratic talking points.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad site or that liberalism or progressivism is wrong. What I am saying is that you don't try to disprove someone saying a Salon.com article is biased (in favor of the Left) by providing them with corroborating sources from a website even more liberal than Salon.com. It's like combating the Tea Party by providing a Kucinich speech calling Obama a warmonger.
I appreciate that your ideology essentially defines the market as the definition of right and wrong. I disagree strongly.
On the one hand, people are not rational, and they will not act rationally when their life is on the line. See: Negotiating for health care, what EA does to everyone working for them, your example, ect ect.
On the other hand, better that they make no money at all?
The reality is your time may be better spent disrupting the system that requires money to survive.
In the mean time, support charities that don't expect anything else in return..
Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of CEO pay, but it's not relevant. How does that thinking go? Take the money CEO's are making and give it to the impoverished? And what shall they do for that money? Pump gas? There arn't enough gas stations, there's not enough menial labor, and there's more than enough machines.
As cruel as it sounds, are workers not a commodity? Is their rarity of skills not a prize with a price tag? What do you say to the companies looking for people in very high supply? You have to buy at high prices? response: "OK, Then never mind"
I don't know what the solution is, but what is there to do that is worth the money right now?
Part of the problem with this is the perennial problem that rich people, compared with ordinary people, don't spend their money. Presumably that's part of how they became rich; by holding onto money. From personal experience, I've had months in which my own pile of money makes more money than my full-time job. I expect if you're rich enough that this can happen every month, the temptation to not spend it becomes immense.
One of the benefits of unions is, as you suggest, getting a decent wage. This wage comes out of the company, and one way to do it is reducing the ridiculous CEO salary and other such big salaries at the top.
So now we have a lot of ordinary people with money. What do ordinary people do with money? They spend it. This is exactly what we want to happen. They go out and they create demand for consumer goods and services. In effect, they create jobs. A thousand ordinary people spending all their money creates a lot more demand than one rich person dumping it into an offshore tax haven.
Sometimes you hear the rich describing themselves as job creators; they're wealth sinks. Money comes to them, and stops (or at least radically slows down). What creates jobs is demand for goods and services, and the ability to pay for it; unions ensuring decent wages directly create this effect.
As cruel as it sounds, are workers not a commodity? This, to me, is something of a moral issue; I accept that you can take a strict economic view of people just as one part of the economic machine, and the point of all creation is to create and run an economic machine. I take a different view; that this idea is repugnant and grotesque.
Paint me a disgusting inhuman monster all you want. I am not swayed by this position. For rather obvious reasons.
No. Perhaps you didn't read what I wrote. Here's a quick refresher that might make it clear that you've completely misunderstood. I said:
One of the problems we seem to have is that there is still belief in the "trickle down" effect
problems; I clearly indicated that this is a BAD idea that DOESN'T work.
I said a number of other things along these lines. Essentially, what I said is the exact opposite of what you seem to think I said. I appreciate that English isn't your first language, but you've got completely, absolutely the reverse understanding of what I said. You could not have missed the point more.
Illuminati -> Bankers -> CEO's -> Multimillionaires -> ordinary folk -> Lowerclass -> Homeless
You want money to go to the ordinary folk right? They will create more jobs, because they spend the money, the create the cash flow and...
Ok that still sounds like the lower class are hosed.
My friend, you can call me incompetent all you want. I believe you have spent much time mulling over your ideas, like anyone who gives a damn about politics. However the conclusions you reached, that you feel are obvious, may be flawed in some rather significant ways. You may be making Logical jumps I am unwilling to make. It is not obvious how this strategy of pooling money into an arbitrary bracket of our respective cultures will improve the lives of anyone but that arbitrary bracket. You have failed to convince me.
Two options then, try again as I remain receptive to these ideas. Or not.
You clearly have no experience with people in abject poverty.
There is a massive power imbalance between companies and employees because they need us to expand and we need them to eat. If it weren't for unions we'd still be shuffling into the mines from the time we wake until the time we have to sleep again, six days a week. Do you think miners thought they were getting paid enough?